Welcome to another edition
of Linus Lam Network News for 2012! This news report covers our trip
to Otakon 2012 for a huge weekend of anime and manga enjoyment and
a whole lot more! Held at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, Maryland
over the weekend of July 27-29, Otakon 2012 saw lots of attendees ready to party on with a bunch of
dedicated artists, live performances, gaming events, cosplay fun, and plenty of opportunities to hang
out with fellow anime and manga fans. Our exciting trip to Otakon 2012 starts here! Coverage you can count on, here at Linus Lam
Network News!

Highlights: Various live programming events kept the attendees well-covered throughout the weekend. Big events included Cosplay Contest, Anime Music Videos,
Anime Trivia Contests, Karaoke, and Guest panels. Panels and workshops included functions like
Anime News Network, Traveling to Japan, Legend of Zelda, New Anime for
Older Fans, Anime Fandom and Getting Older, Japan's Law and Order, Giant
Robots, Vocaloid, Touhou Project, Digital Painting, How to Draw Chibis,
Masquerade 101, Art of Kimono Dressing, Jojo's Posing School, Fandom and
Criticism, Steampunk, Anime and Manga Studies, Composing Music for Games,
K-Pop vs. J-Pop, Worst Anime of All Time, Japanese Traditional Theater,
Weirdest Games You Never Played, Great Anime Openings, Making New
Animation, Sentai Filmworks, Culinary Manga, and lots more.

Report:
One of the
pleasures of visiting Otakon every year is because it is the east coast's
largest and most popular anime convention. Everyone talks about it
and everyone goes to it. But perhaps this year that same fevered
pleasure and anticipation to provide the best coverage possible quickly
turned into a few hours of sour grapes when Friday's pre-registration line
screeched to a grinding halt and stayed that way in the scorching hot sun
with temperatures in the triple digits. Instead of getting in at the
usual 9-10am, the coverage started at a very late 4pm in the afternoon
after just giving up on the pre-reg line after an hour and relaxing in the
room until the line was almost gone. By that time, it was a
challenge to play catch-up and quickly get back to a decent quota of
photos that speaks of the Otakon Experience. One has wonder if the
pre-reg line mess can be blamed on the rising attendance to 32,000 or if
registration staff had a bad pick of the third-party lot with zero
motivation in getting the attendees processed as quickly as
possible. I think it's both. They are usually very fast, but
this year it's like Otakon just wanted to deliberately piss off as many
attendees as possible in order to keep the crowds down. Just a
thought.

One thing I'll never understand is Otakon's panel selection process.
It's Otakon
vs. every other anime convention out there. For example, Otakon
didn't have any My Little Pony panels because they didn't feel it was
their target market or something. And yet, AX, Fanime, Katsucon, and
other anime conventions hosted My Little Pony panels. On the flip
side, Otakon hosted plenty of Steampunk panels while the others... not so
much. Just by the name alone, you'd think Otakon was inclusive to
all sorts of wacky otaku-related objects of fancy and that includes My
Little Pony. I guess MLP just isn't otaku and Steampunk is?
They even had a panel about posing from Jojo's Bizarre Adventures.
Think about that for a bit.

As usual, Otakon doesn't save any space for just sitting around doing
nothing as every square inch of real estate inside the cavernous Baltimore
Convention Center is used for your otaku pleasure. The gaming area
is hands-down the nation's largest hall anyone can enjoy without having to
worry about crowds or waiting in long lines for a chance to play their
favorite video games. The Dealers Hall is three times larger and
just when you think you've found the exit, you're immediately duped into
spying a special piece of merchandise and oh no! You're lost
again. That's actually kind of neat. Maybe your wallet would
disagree.

One of the most interesting trends Otakon has caught on this year is the
K-Pop explosion. Korean boy-band sensation VIXX held a concert and
there were plenty of panels for K-Pop and dealers sold tons of exclusive
K-Pop merchandise like trading cards, posters, CDs, and concert DVDs.
One has to wonder if this is just the beginning of an even larger
phenomenon about to happen in 2013.

Waiting in line for pre-registration should never take up a better part of
your day for Otakon. It's supposed to be fast, efficient and not
even be registered as an afterthought. It's not supposed to be a
painful trial by fire. I mean, aren't you supposed to save time by
pre-registering instead of registering at-con? Let's hope someone
upstairs gets that message and transforms into a crazy otaku hell-bent on
implementing a way to make it simply go faster. Because if it
doesn't, you've got a lot more ambulances paying to visit to
possible attendees fainting from heatstroke. And the guy outside who
sells Ice Cold
Water for Only One Dollar? He deserves a staff badge.